ture of flax. Among the refugees was a pictorial representations on the walls of Egyptian tombs and temples, some of them as strikingly similar to the doings of Irish and Belgian peasants engaged in the flax manufacture as if copied on the spot. We have no more curious illustration of the in many respects one-sided and singularly accidental progress of modern civilization. There is something truly marvellous in the trivances for manufacturing cotton shown in the "iron tabernacle "of the present International Exhibition, and the reflection that the whole is but the product of some seventy or eighty years. Before Arkwright's time the cotton manufacture was carried on—as the flax manufacture is still to a great extent-in the cottages of agricultural laborers, who, working partly in the fields and partly at their simple hand-looms, brought both calicoes gentleman of the name of Louis Cromonelin, a native of St. Quentin, whose family had been engaged for generations in the linen trade. This M. Cromonelin took a patent for various contrivances in the spinning and weaving of flax, and setting earnestly to work in the new manufacture, crops of the plant soon sprang up in all directions, and thousands of acres of land, mere wastes pre-contemplation of the thousand wonderful conviously, were covered with the graceful little annual, on tall and slender stalk, with delicate blue flowers, which in the time of Abraham already produced the "fine linen " on the spindles and looms of Babylonia. The flax manufactories, no less than the manufacturers, following the impulse thus given, throve remarkably well in Ireland; and it is interesting to note that at the present day a descendant of M. Louis Cromonelin is at the head of one of the largest linen estab-and cabbages to the nearest market, to dislishments in the province of Ulster. Towards pose of them to itinerant dealers. The stride the end of the latter century the use of the from those old rural hand-looms to the modfibre of flax was near taking the lead in the ern machinery exhibited in the western anmanufacture of textile materials, when all nexe of Captain Fowke's warehouse is far at once a series of mechanical inventors- more gigantic than anything else in the hisHargreaves, Compton, Arkwright, and others tory of modern inventions, not excepting rail-appeared upon the stage, devoting them-way travelling and electric interchange of selves entirely to the improvement of cotton words. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there is machinery. Their efforts produced a social anything more expressive of human ingenuity and commercial revolution as great as the-that which Carlyle calls the beaver-faculty introduction of the locomotive on the road. The quantity of cotton brought to this country in 1764 amounted only to about four millions of pounds; but in 1780 it came to be seven millions; in 1790, thirty millions; in 1800, about fifty millions; and increasing every decennium by from forty to one hundred millions, reached in 1860 the total of 1,250,000,000 pounds. Every step in this rising scale of consumption was marked, and was produced in the first instance by improved machinery. It seemed as if the entire energy of the mechanical genius of the age had been thrown into one direction of making contrivances for spinning and weaving cotton, and that all rival branches of industry had become totally neglected. So it happened that the methods for preparing flax adopted in this country, and, indeed, over the whole of Europe at the present time, still resemble those used by the ancient flax-growers of Egypt four thousand years ago, and yet followed by the natives of Hindostan. This is proved by numerous of man-in the world, than some of the cotton-spinning automatons at the exhibition. An immense row of spindles are seen flying round in furious whirl, twisting slender threads in all directions, bending upwards and downwards, obedient to an invisible power, and performing evolutions unapproachable in exactness and regularity by the hand of man. Other parts of the machinery take the cotton fibre, spread it evenly over long lattices, pass it between rollers, lead it along under a complication of wrappers, combs, brushes, and knives, and discharge it in the end in greatly altered form, ready for furthur manipulation. There is incessant life, movement, and action, and no propelling agency visible, save an occasional whiff of steam, which now and then pops out from beneath the world of wheels. Perhaps a little girl, with flakes of cotton in her hair, and more flakes in her apron, is looking on leisurely from the distance, pulling out here and there an errant thread; but apparently not otherwise interested in the doings of the huge automaton. Contemplating the thing | crying in its distress, grew originally in the for awhile, nigh stunned by the tumult of Antilles, where Columbus found it on his wheels and levers, the thought creeps over arrival, and settled a supply of it as a tribute the mind that all earthly intelligence has on the natives. The districts of San Franbeen concentrated here for the sole purpose çois of Bailly, and other old settlements of of shaping the fibres of the gossypium plant Guadaloupe and the neighboring islands, into a textile fabric. To perform the task, furnished for a long time the whole of Euten millions of steam-propelled spindles are rope with the best kind of cotton. In 1808, incessantly whizzing in this country, and the export of the material from the Antilles hundreds of thousands of free men must be amounted to near a million and a half of dependent on the labor of the slave. It is a pounds; but the culture was as suddenly contemplation almost hideous, to think of a interrupted by the wars of the first empire, legion of such automatons as are seen in the western exhibition annexe, all whirling and whizzing, but with no food to put down their throat, and nothing to grasp between their iron teeth. King Cotton, with famine in his trail, looks lurid in the extreme. as recently again in the internecine struggle of America. Flying from the scene of strife, some French emigrants carried a small quantity of cotton seed from Guadaloupe to South Carolina, and thus established the element of commercial importance in the The terrors vanish somewhat on a further American Republic. This was the origin of stroll through the exhibition. There are the famous sea-island cotton. For many hundreds upon hundreds of stalls, from all years past, the French Government has tried parts of the world, whose owners offer to hard to revive the culture of the plant in the feed King Cotton, be he ever so hungry. Antilles, but without any appreciable sucAustralia, South America, the Cape, Natal, cess. The millions spent to encourage the Egypt, Algiers, Ceylon, China, Japan, the industry have had no other effect hitherto whole of India, and a host of other countries, but to destroy it more and more, by introdown to classic Attica, have sent samples of ducing the artificial element. The same has their gossypium to show what they can do been the case in other countries, wherever towards keeping the ten millions of British governments or commercial associations spindles in movement. The sight is a very have attempted to carry the matter with a fair one; but, alas, far from being entirely high hand. King Cotton evidently disdains consolatory. The catalogue of countries restraint, and will rule only by the grace of which can produce cotton, but have not yet God and his own supreme will. Whether it proved it, is like the list of works which would not be wise to temper the sway by young authors and poets set down in their constitutional means, such as the appointpocket-books, as intending to write as soon ment of Prince Flax to the chief ministry, is as called upon, and which consequently they a question which the owners of the ten milnever do write. This awful question of cot-lions of spindles will have to decide before ton, it seems, is ruled everywhere more by long. It seems hard and almost unnatural accident than by the will of governments and nations. The ten millions of British spindles grew into existence because, as it chanced, a few working men of Lancashire took to inventing power-looms instead of flax-steeping machines; and King Cotton himself built up his throne on the banks of the Mississippi, because a couple of halfstarved Frenchmen were wrecked there one day with a few seeds of gossypium in their pockets. The finest "long-stapled" cotton, the only kind for which Lancashire is really that hundreds of thousands of Europeans should be dependent for their very existence on the fibres of a plant which will only grow in hot and unhealthy climes, and the control of which, wherever produced, must be insecure in the last degree. Accident made King Cotton sovereign; but nature points in another direction, to an organism of the same constituencies, which flourishes with our race from the torrid zone to the north pole. We have it on high authority that man does not live on bread alone: why on cotton ? From Once a Week. ? JOIN HANDS-LEAVE NOBODY OUT. No nation can, at any time, be secure from that cold qualm of social fear which is one of the most peculiar of human sensations. We English know nothing, personally, of the terror of looking and listening for an invading army, actually marching on our soil. We know only the milder forms of national fear; but their effect, once felt, is never effaced. The sensation, on being overtaken by the crash of 1825-6, by the Cholera of 1832 and 1849, by the Potato-rot of 1846, and the financial panics of 1847 and 1857, is as distinct in each case as the cases themselves; and yet the experience is unlike that of any other kind of dread. The same peculiar qualm has been sickening our hearts now, for some time past. If any hearts are not yet sick at the doom of Lancashire and Cheshire, they have to become so; and it certainly seems to me that those are happiest who were the earliest to perceive the truth. Ours is a country blessed beyond every other, in regard to the blessings which we prize most. It is impossible to overrate the privilege of living in England: but even here we are not safe from national afflictions, taking the form of rebuke for our follies and sins. We have the sensation now of being under rebuke, and of having to suffer for some time to come, after many years of welfare which seemed to have grown into a confirmed habit of prosperity. The sensation is very painful. It is not to be shirked on that account, but rather treated with reverence, that it may impress upon us what it is that we ought to do. The worst part of the whole misfortune is that the greatest sufferers are those who are in no way to blame for the calamity. We who are outside of the manufacturing interest may fine ourselves, punish ourselves, fatigue ourselves to any extent; but we cannot suffer anything like the anguish of the operatives in their decline into destitution. Those of us who have known them see but too well what that anguish must be. That class of operatives are a proud people, hitherto filled with comfort and complacency, and holding a social rank which appeared high to them, however little might be known in aristocratic regions of the depth of gradation between the cotton-spinner and the town Arab or Union pauper. The mill-people have been opulent in their own rank in life. They could lay by considerable amounts of money; and amny of them did. Of those who did not, and perhaps of some who did, it was understood that they were better customers to tradesmen than the gentry. The earliest and chiefest delicacies in the market were bought up by the operatives; the gayest silks and shawls, and head-trimmings, were worn by the factory-women; the most expensive picnics in the country were those organized by the operatives. Better than this, they have been buyers of books, students of music and drawing, supporters of institutes, and not a few of them members of co-operative societies which have won the respect of thousands of persons prejudiced against the very name. These are the people who are now, all at once and all together, deprived of employment and of income. By a stroke which they could not avert they are now reduced to absolute want. Instead of their dainty dinners and suppers, they have actually not enough of dry bread. Their expensive clothes are all gone, and they can hardly dress themselves so as to appear outside their own doors. Their furniture is gone, and they are sleeping on the bare floor. Their books are gone, with the names of each of the family in some or other of them; the treasure of music-books is gone, and the violin and the flute; the collections of plants and insects, and geological specimens, have been sold for what they would fetch. Not only is there nothing left; there is nothing to look to. Week after week, and month after month, must wear on, and there, or in a worse place, they must sit, still waiting for work and pay, and kept from starving only by charity, outside the workhouse now, but perhaps within it by and by. The good steady girls pine and waste: the bright boys the pride of father and mother are stopped in their progress. All alike are without work and without prospect. It is this spectacle, with its long-drawn misery to come, which sends the qualm of dread through us; as well it may. We get no comfort by looking beyond the class. That class are the natural patrons of the tradesmen. The tradesmen can get in no bills: they are selling nothing, unless on credit; and they are paying high rates. They cannot stand long, they say. The small gentry who live by their house prop erty are in much the same situation. They can get in no rents; and yet they have to pay water-rates, poor-rates,-all their tenant's dues so that they have less than nothing to live on. I will go no further in this direction. I do not write this to make others and myself miserable, but to discuss what we ought to do. In regard to the extent of the evil, then, I will add only that the population immediately concerned is from four to five millions, without reckoning the shopkeepers and small gentry who are involved with them. Now, if I am to say what I think, as it is my custom to do, I must declare that, in my opinion, every one of us who enjoys food, shelter and clothing, is bound to help these sufferers. In my opinion, all ordinary almsgiving, all commonplace subscription of crowns or sovereigns, is a mere sign of ignorance, or worse. There are persons who give away a great deal in the course of the year, varying their donations from five shillings to five pounds, who never once conceived of such a thing as a call to part with any considerable part of their substance. Such persons gave £1 to the Patriotic Fund, just as they do every year to the nearest Dispensary: such persons would subscribe their sovereign to a national loan if all the navies of the world were in our seas, and half a dozen hostile armies were pouring out upon our shores: and such persons will no doubt offer their sovereign or five-pound note now to the Lancashire fund,-never dreaming that they appear to others like men walking in their sleep. Some means must be found to make them understand that the task before us all is nothing less than this;-to support, with health and mind unbroken, for half a year, a year, or perhaps two years, four millions or more of respectable people, who must in no sense be trifled with, or degraded, or unfitted for resuming their industry, whenever the opportunity arises. A vast sum of money will be required for this purpose: and, till we see how much, it seems to me that those of us who cannot at once contribute a tenth or such other proportion of our income as we think right, should deny ourselves mere pleasures, and give up or defer any expenditure which can be put off, till we see what the winter will be like to the people of Lancashire and Cheshire. If the old and constant objection is urged, that thus trade will suffer by our retrenchment of expenditure, the plain answer is "Very true: and this is the tradesman's share of the national calamity. It will not be a ruinous occasion to tradesmen outside of the manufacturing districts; and they must bear their share. The failure of cotton has caused an actual loss of several millions already; and all just principle and [feeling requires that the loss should be spread as widely as possible over society. Let our mercers and music-sellers, then, our confectioners and cabinet-makers go without our fancy custom this year; and you and I will go without new dress, new music, our dessert, our autumn journey, or any indulgence which interferes with our giving a substantial part of our income to the Lancashire people." But there are other people in Lancashire than those who are poor, the world is saying. This is abundantly true; and once more, if I am to speak out what I think, I must say that the thought of that particular class is scarcely less painful than the contemplation of their poor workpeople. When some of them, or their friends, cry "Let bygones be bygones," the answer is, that that is not possible. The past (as including the last hundred years) of Lancashire is too remarkable, and on the whole, too illustrious and honorable, to be ever forgotten or dropped out of history. To go no further back than the distress of 1842, it can never be forgotten how nobly and how wisely many of the mill-owners sustained their workpeople through months and years of adversity; nor can it ever be forgotten that that was the occasion which disclosed the prodigious advance made by the operatives in knowledge, reason, and self-command. For the same causes which render these facts ineffaceable in our history, the subsequent characteristics and conduct of the employers will be also remembered. We need not dwell on them; but we cannot pass them over in an hour of meditation on what we ought each and all to do. Our cotton manufacturers have been openly regarded, for many years, in America as the main supporters of negro slavery. This is no concern of ours, now and here, except that it tends to explain the apathy first, and the pedantry of political economy afterwards, by which they have rendered themselves, in the world's eyes, answerable for all the really the remote Hindoo as against the enslaved negro. The event has rebuked the pedantry of the Lancashire talk of demand and supply; and now, after having applied their wealth to every enterprise under Heaven but the one which was urgent, they find themselves without the raw material of their own manufacture. afflictive part of the present distress. They in the case of the Irish peasant, it has been knew that their countrymen understood slave- madness when the parties concerned were labor to be a most precarious element in the work of production; they were warned, through a period of thirty years, that a day must come when slave-labor in the Cotton States would be suddenly annihilated; they were shown incessantly for ten years past that the time for that catastrophe was approaching; they were conjured to appropriate some of their new wealth to ensuring a due cultivation of cotton in other and various countries, and especially to sustain the experiments carefully instituted by Government in India. Some three or four of their own number devoted time, trouble, money, and other precious things to this duty; and these have never ceased appealing to the rest to prepare while it was yet time to avert the very calamity which is now upon us. It was in vain. The constant answer was that it was not their business, in the first place; and that, in the next, the world would use none but American cotton. This last allegation seems to be already withdrawn. Indeed, it could not stand a moment after the disclosure was made that not only Switzerland and France, but the New England States themselves, prefer Indian to American cotton, because it takes the dye better, and wears better. There is evidence enough in the Exhibition of the suitableness of Indian cotton for our purposes, to silence that insolence which till now has rebuked our petition for it. I need say no more of this, nor point out the wide range of soil and climate in which cotton equal to the American can be grown. So much for the past. What are they doing now? They are acting very variously, according to the intelligence and temper of each. The remark is universal, however, that there is as yet no approach towards any manifestation of power and will at all befitting the occasion, Some few have contributed £1,000 apiece. Perhaps they may mean to do more as the months pass on; and there is no saying what calls they may be responding to in the form of rates and private charity: but the common, and I think the upright feeling is that, on this special occasion, it would be no great marvel if the mill-owner who has made £50,000 in a few years were ready to give £20,000 or more for those whose industry built up his fortunes. There are employers who are worth one hundred,-two hundred,-three, four hundred thousand pounds, and up to a million: it is to be hoped that they are not going to set themselves down for £1,000. If this sort of comment has an invidious look, let us remember, on behalf of the wide world which is discussing it, that the people we have, as a nation, to carry through this calamity are above four millions, and that it is their industry which has enriched a whole As to its not being their business,-whose class of manufacturers in the shortest space business was it, if not theirs ? Where of time ever known. The world has expecwould the linen manufacture of Ireland have tations from the capitalists; and they ought been now, if the manufacturers had not to know what those expectations are. looked to the flax supply? They invested At this very time, however, when parliasome of their capital in enabling the flax-ment and the people generally have willgrowers to learn their business, to improve their methods, to use costly machinery; and their manufacture stands, though the prospect of a due supply of flax was as desperate, a dozen years ago, as that of cotton is now. The Irish peasant and farmer might more reasonably have been referred to the rules of political economy, than the Indian ryot on the one hand and the American slave on the other. If it would have been absurd to stand preaching about demand and supply ingly indulged the moneyed men of Lancashire and Cheshire in their wishes as to the fitting of the Poor-law to their case, there is no little indignation afloat when these men are met on their travels, or enjoying themselves in sight-seeing and other amusements, while all is so dark at home. I own my inability to conceive how clergymen's families can go pleasure seeking, when they leave a whole population of starving weavers behind at home. I cannot imagine how mill-owners |